Apollo 6: A Major Unplanned Accomplishment.

Another thing most people don't know is that all those cool films of the launch vehicle separating in flight shot from inside the stages were taken from Apollo 6, which was packed with instrumentation and movie cameras. The film cartridges were separated, dropped in the ocean and picked up by sailors for later analysis. There were no compact HD digital cameras back then like there are today on almost every launch. People get confused because whenever you see some video or documentary about Apollo 11 they always edit in footage from Apollo 6, because that's the only in-flight footage of a Saturn V staging that exists.

Those of us who lived in Cocoa Beach witnessed every launch. We have not forgotten.

I remember Apollo 8 being front page news. The video of "Earthrise" as the capsule came around from the far side of the Moon was spectacular.

Amazing! I was privileged to view every single Saturn V launch in history from the beach at Daytona Beach. My 12 year-old self used a 6" aperture telescope for Apollo 6 and could read the "UNITED STATES" on the side of the rocket 45 miles away. That's how huge these rockets were. Five minutes later the ground could be felt vibrating under my feet! Those were amazing times.

Apollo 8 was the first time human beings visited the moon. They didn't land on the moon but they were the first people to see the far side of the moon with their eyes. I remember all of the manned launches from Mercury to Apollo. I had scale models of the Mercury and Gemini capsules and launch vehicles. It was an exciting time for us.

Some years back, I had as my computer desktop at work, a series of eclipse phases of the Moon with the largest central picture the full eclipse. Had several folks comment that the shots were really good and well done. Though in the past a photographer, they were not mine, and I'd just credit the fella who took the pictures, one David Morgan-Mar, creator of the "Irregular Webcomic". Only one co-worker ever got what was "wrong" with the pictures. "Why is the Moon upside down?" DMM is an Aussie, and lives in Sydney

Excellent video, thank you. More space history please. It's depressing to have lived through arguably the greatest achievement of humankind, only to see it fade into obscurity and become the subject of conspiracy theories. But I'm so very grateful I was born at the beginning of the Space Age and got to experience these events firsthand.

Fixes 1) POGO - add helium damper 2) second stage motor failures - caused by crossed cables so they shortened them preventing a mistake in assembly (also see #3), and 3) re-ignition of motor failure - beefed up the igniter that was ruptured by the POGO event (same fix on second stage).

I still think George Mallory's and Andrew Irvine's failed attempt to scale Mt. Everest in 1924 is terrific forgotten history that deserves to be remembered.

Tang was actually pretty good. At least that's how I remember it.

Excellent review. I wasn't aware of what Apollo 6 had achieved. Apollo 8 is my favourite.

I love studying the history of the USSR space missions and one of the aspects of both the Space Programs (manned, lunar and exploratory) is the history of the failure of launches, tests and lessons learned from people working hard and trying their best to engineer such feats. A lot of men (and animals too) died horribly in the name of Science during that time and even, sometimes, today. All work of mankind is a marathon and not a sprint, but we seem to love the more grandiose and easily successful missions when they go right. But Life is a series of lessons learned through failure and the more celebrated successes wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the tries and failures. I do love the term “Unplanned Accomplishment” and I think it should be used more often. I’m going to start using more often starting today!!

I was 9 years old when the Apollo I tragedy occurred. Like many boys my age, I was fascinated and extremely interested in the space program and, of course, drank Tang. I was devastated to learn of Ed White’s passing. Since he was the first American to do an EVA, he was somewhat of a hero to me. In addition, I had an uncle who worked at NASA in Houston whose house was only a few doors down from White’s. He was a medical doctor and, interestingly, can be seen in the background of a shot for Don Knotts’ movie, The Reluctant Astronaut. Because of that connection, I had some great tours of NASA and wowed my classmates when I was able to bring some “astronaut food" to show-and-tell.

I have two things to comment on: 1) The American public was not disinterested in the program or bored, it's the press that gets bored and buries the news. It's the press that decides what it's going to cover or not cover. Same thing happens today. 2) There is a very good book, good read on the entire program. It's the "Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles"

I love how recently the foreground and background decorations model the subject at hand.

Ah, the Apollo missions. I did a paper on them in 9th grade, the year following the landing of the first man on the moon. And I had a hard time finding anything on any mission between Apollo 1 and 7. I still get goosebumps whenever I hear, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Glued to the TV set we were, allowed to stay up way past bedtime to see it. What a day! Thank you, History Guy, for the trip down Memory Lane, and the info I lacked for my report!

When your budget is 26 billion dollars, things don't go wrong, things go right in unexpected ways!😁👍

Being born in 1956 I grew up with the Apollo program. I remember collecting the badges off the back of my morning breakfast cereal. Watching it step by step. How many of us recall looking up at the moon and knowing that two men were on the surface. Suddenly the moon seemed closer.

Engineering is often thought of as always focused on exacting detail, and need to arrive at a desired right answer. This episode brings up two of my favorite characteristics of Real engineering, especially in early development. 1) sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good and 2) many (most?) of the best learnings come from examining failures that you didn’t expect. This is why you test- you don’t know what you don’t know…and as good as simulation is today it only gets you so far.

As closely as I followed everything I didn’t know this at all. I turned 18 while Neil and Buzz were out of the LEM taking that first walk for humans on our Moon. I watched the final launch, Apollo 17 late at night, from outside the South Gate of KSC. I grew up 40 miles from the test center in Mississippi. I went with friends in high school to watch a couple of tests of the mighty Saturn V booster. I got an idea and pulled it off. We arrived laden with a lot of camera gear from 35 mm cameras to a 16 mm Bolex movie camera. I boldly went up to a NASA porters office and told him we were from a magazine (I made up a name on the spot) and got us all press passes. We loaded up on a school bus type bus and were driven to a gravel lot only one mile from the test stand. When it lit an angry looking orange flame multiple stories high and (I estimated) 700’ long shout out to the left. The sound was like nothing you will ever know, because even at a launch the VIPs are about 4 miles away I believe. It was so intense the bus rocked back and forth violently. I cupped my hands around the ear of a friend and shouted instructions. He could not hear a word I shouted from one inch away. My pants legs flapped from the sound pressure. There was no wind. Totally calm day. Atmospheric conditions had to be just right to have a test firing. It has to be a cloud free day. Tricks with listening equipment l had to go to surrounding towns while an extremely large horn was blown to test for clear air reflective layers. They didn’t know they needed to do this until after the first test. What happened? It broke windows out of houses in a town 25 miles away, well outside the giant forested easement zone. They learned. I heard a test firing from home one day. Pictures hanging on the wall started vibrating from low frequency shaking. I couldn’t imagine what the noise was at first, so I ran outside to see what direction it was coming from. It was from the west, exactly in the direction of the (now named) Stennis Space Center. There was a small cumulus cloud it was bouncing off of. The sky wasn’t 💯% free of clouds that day. The first ever test firing was at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville Alabama. They quickly saw the need for a remotely located facility tripartite to populations, as that was a cloudy day that repeatedly bounced the sound between land and sky. It was heard in downtown Atalanta. Southwest Mississippi was the obvious place for it as the booster was built at Michaud in New Orleans East. From there it was transport by barge, too big for land, along the Intercostal Waterway to the Pearl River and up a canal to the test stand. Then back out on a barge following the Gulf Coast all the way around Florida and up the Banana River to be offloaded to go to the giant VAB for the rocket stages to be stacked. It was a great rocket. I wish e were still built them or better yet, the proposed C8, a Saturn with 8 instead of 5 F1 engines on the first stage, 12 million pounds of thrust. That would have shook things up! I tried to see a shuttle launch but unfortunately I had bad timing in my attempts when there were lots of postponements. I intend to to an manned Artemis launch one day with a VIP pass. I haven’t figured out how, but I wrangled one in the Shuttle era so I’ll find s way to arrange something again, while I’m still here on Earth! I have, of course, just over seven decades behind me now, so there’s only a few more decades left I think, to get it done!